CompuServe Messages

Rudy: Good to see you on line. My wishes/ideas: ** CA Lab: ** A slicker interface, especially for CA. Don't remove the ability to play RC "like a color organ", though. Higher resolution for RC woud be nice, although perhaps that just means adding RC-like controls to CA. Maybe cell shapes other than rectangular? This one isn't too high on my list, but it could be fun (cf. the hexagonal cells in Wolfram's September 84 Scientific American article). Keep the manual's present format and style – don't let it get "homogenized". I'd like to read more about mathematical "irreducibility" and how CAs bear on it. You mention such things in the manual and in "Mind Tools", but both descriptions are tantalizingly brief. ** CHAOS: ** This idea may sound a bit weird, but I'd like to see a module/graphical tutorial/on-line primer on topology. After reading a few layperson's books on chaos theory, I have something of a feel for how strange attractors and other chaotic systems work, but I don't really understand their connection to the underlying topological ideas. [More]